


Points of Convergence

by wordybee



Series: Community Appreciation Week 2017 [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Also featuring: the spiritual presence of Pierce Hawthorne, Gen, also also featuring: Jeff's character development, everyone returns from everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 11:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10762902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordybee/pseuds/wordybee
Summary: Community Appreciation Week 2017Day 6: post-canon ficIt hits Jeff, quite suddenly, that these people are sharing photos of their lives apart from each other, that the whole group – minus Pierce, may the infuriating bastard rest in Buddha Space or whatever – is completely together for the first time in almost two years.





	Points of Convergence

Annie is the first to hug Troy when he steps through the door of the apartment, but everyone else cheerfully shouts “Welcome home!” while she runs up to wrap her arms around his shoulders. Troy has a bit of scruff on his face and his hair has gone slightly wild, but he still smiles like sunshine pumps through his veins instead of blood as he hugs her back, tightly. She wipes away tears and stands aside to let Shirley have her turn, then Annie throws a handful of metallic confetti over the both of them. Shirley, for what it's worth, had gone through a similar ordeal of hugs and tears just four hours ago, though no one had been wearing pointed, shiny party hats when she’d stepped through the door. Troy had taken a lot longer to get back to them and that, apparently, warrants party hats.

Not that his long, hellish journey actually shows on Troy, other than the scruffy beard and hair situation. He looks neither harried nor haunted, even though the shirt he's wearing – the nicest one he could pluck from the bottom of his beat-up suitcase, since he didn’t want to go shopping before he and Jeff met up with Abed – has what appears to be scorch marks on the hem and along his left sleeve. Abed was the only one to make a comment, and it’d been some bizarre movie reference that Jeff hadn’t cared enough to translate.

When Shirley is finished nearly squeezing the life out of their intrepid world traveler, it’s Britta’s turn. She’s a bit more hesitant, but she looks just as happy to have Troy back as the rest of them, and he has that soft expression he tends to have whenever he gets to hug Britta. She awkwardly pats him on the back, then pulls away, then goes in for Troy Hug, Round Two with a bit more confidence.

Abed watches the greetings from a stool by the breakfast bar. He and Troy hadn’t been especially demonstrative when they’d met at the car rental place near the airport to pick Abed up – there had been no crying, for example, nor anything other than a strong hug and their usual, special handshake. But then again, Jeff has never really understood their friendship beyond the fact that it was something impressive, something borderline inscrutable, and something very particular to them. Despite the fact that Jeff knew Troy’s absence had affected Abed, and could assume that Abed’s absence had affected Troy, the two basically picked up their friendship where they’d left off, which is to say that Troy told Abed about the warehouse he planned to buy and build into a studio-slash-Dreamatorium, and they’d spent the whole car ride back to Greendale making lists of equipment, props, and gear necessary to suit their needs.

Troy didn’t talk about his trip around the world and Abed didn’t talk about his failed attempt at making it in Los Angeles, nor the documentary road trip around America he’d decided to take afterward – and eventually cancel, when his car broke down in Pueblo, Colorado and then Troy announced his return.

After years at Greendale Community College learning to forgive his own mistakes a bit more readily, Jeff can’t say he’s surprised by their dismissal of potholes and hurdles and pirate-shaped brick walls on the paths of their lives. Being a student at Greendale does little to prepare a person for a future in any kind of workforce, but it does a terrific job teaching people how to fail gracefully – and to take those failures and make miracles out of them.

Jeff makes a face when a gleeful Annie reaches up to slip a metallic pink party hat onto his head, but he smiles when she turns away and he’s pretty sure she knows he does it. Here, standing in a living room covered in confetti and surrounded by the people he cares about more than any other people in the world, Jeff can’t help thinking that Greendale has provided him with some terrific miracles.

* * *

From Jeff’s perspective – leaning against the counter in the kitchen, drinking a beer and looking at the rest of the apartment over the surface of the breakfast bar – the activities of the party almost seem like a very bizarre, avant-garde television program. It reminds him of when he was a kid and would make a fake television set out of cardboard and put on shows, except this is the wide-screen, high-definition, bafflingly complex sort of fake TV programming instead of the superhero shows and breaking news bulletins he used to make up as a child.

Britta is arguing with Annie about something stupid (it sounds like the relative feminism of Jane Austen novels? On second thought, they could be loudly agreeing with each other) while both women hold glasses and drink their bright red drinks through environmentally friendly cardboard straws. Abed and Shirley are playing a punch-drunk game of _The Ears Have It_ on the couch, and it’s an odd grouping that probably owes itself to the general camaraderie that has overtaken the apartment with the semi-reunion of their group. Jeff can just barely see an untouched glass of scotch at the center of the dining table – something stupidly expensive, bought and poured by Troy in memory of the man who had sent him on that ridiculous boat trip around the world in the first place.

Troy himself walks into the kitchen, knocking Jeff out of his role as an observer of chaos by bringing a little chaos with him. Troy is grinning broadly, although Jeff has no idea which group he’d been participating in – the discussion of Jane Austen, or the children’s board game involving playing card ears? – because he hadn’t been able to see Troy through the makeshift viewport created by the breakfast bar’s cutaway walls. Troy’s electric smile calms as he approaches, sighing, to lean against the counter with Jeff.

Wordlessly, Jeff steps over and opens the fridge, then twists the cap off a bottle of beer and passes it over to Troy. Troy nods his thanks when Jeff moves back to the space he’d previously occupied.

Jeff takes a sip of his own beer, but Troy just holds his bottle between both hands. The other man’s gaze is trained forward, on the scenes playing out in the living room, and Jeff suddenly no longer feels like his spectator role has diminished by Troy’s presence.

“How does it feel being back?” Jeff asks, because he hasn’t asked the question yet. He’d asked Shirley how long she was staying before she had to return to managing her little bakery and taking care of her family in Atlanta. He’d asked Abed whether he’d gotten enough footage to screen a rough edit of his road trip documentary. He’d asked Troy if he wanted to borrow a shirt that wasn’t so Captured-By-Pirates chic, but he hadn’t actually asked the man what it was like to be back in the country, to be back in Colorado, to be back in Greendale. To be back home.

Troy finally takes a swig of beer. He shrugs, attention still settled on the events happening one room over. Things have switched up a little – the Jane Austen discussion has ended and phones are being passed around. Abed and Shirley are still wearing their _The Ears Have It_ headbands (Shirley has either Vulcan ears or elf ears; Abed’s are cat ears or fox ears – something fuzzy and pointed) and Annie is still clutching her fruity vodka drink, the cardboard straw probably an absolute soggy mess at this point, as she shows the phone in her hand to Britta. Jeff has no idea who is looking at whose phone, but whatever Annie is looking at is apparently hilarious and whatever Shirley is looking at is making her coo and gasp in wonder.

It hits Jeff, quite suddenly, that these people are sharing photos of their lives apart from each other, that the whole group – minus Pierce, may the infuriating bastard rest in Buddha Space or whatever – is completely together for the first time in almost two years.

Maybe the same or a similar thought has occurred to Troy, too, because he huffs out a laugh and says, “Being back is amazing. It’s always amazing to be home, right?”

Jeff watches the four in the other room laugh and chat and point to things on the phone screens that Jeff can’t see. He smiles and doesn’t try to hide it.

“Yeah,” he says. “Pretty amazing.”

A moment passes as Troy and Jeff watch the others, until Annie waves at them through the cutaway and holds out a phone to show off something she – or her second lurid red drink – finds too hilarious to properly articulate. Jeff squints at the glowing screen, but can’t make sense of what he’s seeing. A rock? A mountain? It’s probably Abed’s phone that she’s holding, although there’s really no telling from the smear of dusty brown that he can see. Suddenly the phone is pulled away and it’s just Annie’s hand waving enthusiastically to Jeff, beckoning for him and Troy to join them in the living room. Britta, sitting next to her, is laughing in a more subdued manner than Annie, and mostly seems to be laughing _at_ Annie.

As he and Troy break away from their perspective of outsiders looking in on the wonderful chaos that their lives had become and make their way back to the rest of the group, Jeff asks, “And how does it feel to be a millionaire?”

“ _So_ cool, man.”

“I figured.”

* * *

“You take good care of them,” Shirley says to Jeff much later, when the party has fully died down and the partiers themselves are strewn about the apartment like so much confetti littering the floor. Both Jeff and Shirley are standing in the kitchen – which is, apparently, Jeff’s new favorite place to be – and while Shirley is trying to clean up the dishes that had accumulated over the course of the party, Jeff is just busy contemplating whether or not it’d be rude to drink Pierce’s very expensive memorial scotch.

Jeff has no idea what Shirley means by her words and can’t even discern what tense she’s speaking in – is it present or future, a declaration or a command? It could be either or both, he thinks. Shirley is, after all, the only one of them who will be leaving when this little reunion is over, going back to Atlanta to take care of her father and live a life that’s not quite separate, but not quite a part of theirs. She’s always been protective of the group, and the idea of leaving them in Jeff’s emotionally clumsy hands is probably a worrying one.

Jeff shrugs, sighs, and pours Pierce’s scotch down the drain, then sets the glass in the sink to be washed in the morning. He probably doesn't need anymore alcohol tonight anyway, but there's also a voice in the back of his head that sounds like Abed, telling him if he drinks memorial scotch he'll be haunted. And the last thing Jeff wants is to be haunted by Pierce Hawthorne.

“I’ve really missed this bunch,” Shirley continues, voice even quieter than before. She’s turned around to look out at the living room in the same way Jeff had done earlier that evening. Jeff pivots a bit to look as well and, from his angle, he can just barely see one of Annie’s pink-socked feet peeking out from beneath a blanket on the sofa. Troy and Abed are each passed out in recliners, Britta is on a pile of blankets on the floor, and Jeff has no idea why none of these idiots bothered to use the beds of the apartment they’ve all lived in at least once in the past five years.

“Me too,” Jeff agrees. He admits it freely and readily, which clearly surprises Shirley. Probably because the last time they’d really talked in person, he was still stupidly trying to pretend he didn’t care about anyone but himself and that being around the others was some sort of purgatorial punishment for moral crimes he couldn’t remember committing.

Now, though, Jeff has accepted all the caring. Yes, it’s difficult – it’s a constant struggle of balancing his worry with his awareness of these people’s autonomy, their existence as part of The Group and their existence as individuals. He wants to keep them safe here in Greendale and he wants to tell them to run away, to reach higher heights than Greendale could ever offer. Feeling things for other people is, Jeff has learned, complicated and bothersome and he kind of hates it, when he doesn’t absolutely love it.

Jeff smiles at Shirley’s shocked expression. “I did go to college, Shirley,” he says. “I learned things. I mean, the college was Greendale so the education wasn’t exactly conventional, but, you know… I learned.”


End file.
